Going up: grad tax. Going down: IDS?
As mentioned here on Monday, the coalition is sniffing like mad up the graduate tax tree. In a speech tomorrow, Vince Cable will point towards it. It’s a weird feat of Whitehall rearrangements that his department has higher education sitting in and accounting for something like 60 per cent of its spending (bit like a cobra that swallowed a chicken). You can see here some of the arguments against.
Elsewhere in the Whitehall jungle I hear that IDS is having a rough time of it at DWP. The Treasury isn’t buying any of his expensive proposals, carefully worked out in opposition.
He’s baulking at even bigger, straight, old-fashioned cuts to benefits than those already announced. The perpetual conflict between tighter means-testing and disincentives to work is at the heart of all this.
Some Whitehall old hands say IDS is the senior civil servants’ top tip as “minister most likely to walk”… and this is not a reference to the withdrawal of ministerial cars.
There are 2 comments on this post
Why am I not surprised that the only tory who seems to genuinely want to help the poor, is likely to be the first one to leave this heartless government who are using the need for cuts to savage the public sector on ideological grounds.
Seems quite logical that higher Higher Education should be in Business, Innovation and Skills – most of the expansion in the universities has been in vocational degrees. These replace qualifications previously obtained by day release funded by employers (MIBiol, etc). It’s important that business can ensure that these new courses oversupply it with suitably skilled candidates, despite no longer having any commitment to employ them, or contribute to the training cost.
I agree with Sam about IDS – he does seem to have the right instincts about poverty. It would be a shame to see him pushed out.